Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to wind farms and more particularly, relate to a system and method for dispatch scheduling and regulating power in wind farms.
Wind turbines are used to generate electrical power from wind energy. Multiple wind turbines may be coupled together to form a wind farm, and multiple wind farms may be coupled to a power grid. The wind farms are required to provide a committed power to the power grid for scheduling generation and maintaining load-generation balance. However, due to constant fluctuations in wind speed, a difference may occur between a power injected into the power grid and the committed power. In addition to constant fluctuations in wind speed, the load coupled to the power grid may also change constantly. Due to such fluctuations in wind speed and load, a grid frequency of the power grid varies constantly and the wind farms are required to control the power injected into the power grid to maintain grid frequency.
In one type of control methodology, the grid frequency is controlled based on instantaneous dispatch of power by wind farms and the wind farm owners are paid based on an instantaneous change in power supplied to the power grid. However, in some regions, the grid frequency is controlled based on an average frequency of the wind farm for a power dispatch interval. In such scenarios, the wind farm owners are paid based on a predetermined operating revenue model which encourages the wind farm owners to help maintain the grid frequency. The payment of the wind farm owner in such scenarios is computed based on the average frequency of the wind farm in the power dispatch interval unlike the instantaneous power dispatch model. Therefore, use of instantaneous power dispatch control methodology in controlling average frequency of the wind farm in a power dispatch interval leads to unnecessary and complex controls of the wind turbines and undesirable loss of revenue.
Hence, it would be desirable for wind farms to have further options for addressing frequency variations specific to controlling the average frequency of the wind farms in the power dispatch interval.